Sloping succulents and upcycled metal: personal garden of Bay Area landscape designer Mathew McGrath

I love visiting private gardens. They give me an opportunity to learn from what others have created—to be inspired or, conversely, find out what I don't like. If I ever get to create my own dream garden, it will build on everything I've seen over the years.

While I'm eager to discover new things and willing to look closer even at stuff that initially leaves me cold, I virtually never come home thinking, wow, there's nothing I would change in this garden. I'm sure most of us are that way, gravitating naturally towards a pick-and-choose approach. After all, every one of us is unique, so what are the odds we fully embrace what somebody else has done?

Imagine my surprise last Saturday when just that happened. It's all because of this guy:

Mathew McGrath, Farallon Gardens

This is landscape designer Mathew McGrath, the creative mind behind Farallon Gardens, according to their website “one of the leading design and maintenance firms now serving the greater Bay Area.”

Mat and I had been emailing back and forth for a good while, and I finally had the chance to visit him at home in the Berkeley Hills.

Piece of Eden: a plant paradise in Southern California

Everybody deserves their own slice of paradise, wherever and whatever it may be. That's why visiting a fellow gardener who has found theirs is such a treat for me.

A few weeks ago when I was in Southern California for my daughter's university orientation I had the pleasure of hanging out with Hoover Bo, the creative mind behind one my favorite gardening blogs, the aptly named Piece of Eden. Yes, Hoover Boo has created her own paradise, a peaceful sanctuary that seems to exist apart from the world outside.

I first visited Piece of Eden in December 2017 and wrote a two-part post about it (1 | 2). Needless to say the garden looks different in the summer—other plants are in bloom, for one thing. But even without a single flower, Piece of Eden would be dazzling because of the enormous variety of shapes and textures.

Hoover Boo gardens on a ½ acre in Southern California that combines level areas with slopes, both in the front and the back of the property. For someone like me who has always lived in level places any kind of elevation change is a wondrous thing. I'm sure the reality isn't quite as glamorous, but Hoover Boo and her husband, Beloved, have solved their terrain challenges brilliantly.

Starting out, here is the wider view of the immediate neighborhood. Hoover's front yard is on the left; the house you see is their next-door neighbor. And check out the hills in the distance: all of that is undeveloped land protected within the borders of a regional park. Sights like that are becoming rare in the most densely populated part of California.

The massive inflorescence of a flowering Agave marmorata is a beacon that is impossible to miss

Visiting Mountain Crest Gardens succulent nursery in far northern California

We're so used to online ordering, we often forget that the stuff we buy comes from a real place where real people work. It's no different for plant enthusiasts who purchase from sellers all over the country, maybe even from other countries. That's why I get so excited when I have the opportunity to visit one of those “anonymous” businesses.

Mountain Crest Gardens (MCG) is a leading online succulent nursery. Billing itself as “The Ultimate Succulent Store,” they carry 700+ varieties of succulents. On the MCG website—one of the best designed, in my opinion—they're organized in two major groups: “soft” (tender) and “hardy.” The nursery also caters to wholesalers and landscapers with bulk offerings, both plugs and 2" pots.

The beginnings of MCG go back to 1995 (click here to learn more about its history). Initially, they sold pre-planted succulent dish gardens and wooden birdhouses with succulent roofs through big-box retailers and later through their own website. In 2005, they switched to their current format: growing and selling a large variety of named succulents directly to consumers through an easy-to-navigate and richly illustrated online store.

Mountain Crest Gardens is located in an unlikely place for a succulent nursery: the small town of Fort Jones (population 850) in far northern California, about 40 miles from the Oregon border. Fort Jones is in USDA hardiness zone 7b, i.e. its average annual extreme minimum temperature is between 5° and 10°F. According to BestPlaces.net, “there are 136.7 days annually when the nighttime low temperature falls below freezing.”

For me, the location is actually quite convenient. My mother-in-law lives in the Northern California town of Mount Shasta, only 50 miles from Fort Jones. She and I had been talking about visiting Mountain Crest Gardens for over a year, and it finally happened a couple of days ago.

The fastest route from Mount Shasta is just under an hour, taking Interstate 5 to Yreka and then Highway 3 for the remaining 20 minutes. However, my mother-in-law and I decided to take the more leisurely and more scenic route over hill and dale. This part of California is sparsely populated. We only passed through two very small towns; most of the drive looked like this:

Succulent wonderland at Newport Beach Civic Center

Completed in 2013, the Civic Center in the Southern California coastal city of Newport Beach has become a word-of-mouth destination for succulent enthusiasts. It's easy to see why:

Newport Beach Civic Center along Avocado Avenue

The complex, which houses Newport Beach city hall and the central library, is architecturally stunning. It's adjoined by 14 acres of parks and gardens transected by 1.25 miles of walking trails. The $140 million price tag is hefty, but no corners were cut—and that applies to the outside areas as well. That in itself is very gratifying since landscaping, which is usually the last major element to be installed in a project, often gets the short end of the stick, especially when there are budget overruns.

The landscape design was created by Berkeley-based PWP Landscape Architecture whose projects are found all over the world, including Jewel Changi Airport in Shanghai, the National September 11 Memorial in New York, and the Marina Bay Sands Resort in Singapore. With their extensive experience and a generous $15 million budget, PWP created the kind of high-impact public landscaping that gets even indifferent and incurious passers-by to take a second look.

Another must-see SoCal nursery: Plant Depot in San Juan Capistrano

San Juan Capistrano is famous for two things: its Spanish mission founded in 1776, and the cliff swallows that arrive from Argentina every year on St Joseph's Day (March 19) and leave on the day of St John of Capistrano (October 23).

For plant lovers, I'm going to add something else: Plant Depot.

Plant Depot is a large family-owned garden center conveniently located right off Interstate 5. They seem to carry everything from aloes to zinnias, along with pottery, decor and gift items, tools and all kinds of accessories. Most importantly, I'm happy to report that they have a larger selection of succulents than any other general retail nursery I've been to in Southern California. Continue reading to see photographic proof.

Yucca 'Bright Star' and Lotus berlothii planted in bowls on top of the pillars that are part of the streetside fence 

Ironically, I hadn't heard of Plant Depot until last Friday when I visited Hoover Boo of Piece of Eden and she asked me if I'd ever been there. Through sheer luck, I had a couple of hours of me time (my family was doing other things), so I made a beeline for San Juan Capistrano. Traffic was still light, so I got there in 30 minutes.

Checking out OC Succulents, Irvine, CA

We're in Southern California for daughter #2's freshman orientation at University of California Irvine. When traveling with family, plant-related interests aren't at the top of my agenda, but I still try to squeeze in what I can.

Fortunately, the family sleeps late and many nurseries open early. Case in point: OC Succulents (OC stands for Orange County). It has three locations, one each in Orange County, Los Angeles County, and San Diego County. Primarily a wholesale nursery, it's open to the public as well. As you can see below, it's not a fancy “destination” with elegant displays and a nice cafe, but rather the kind of place where landscapers go with their trucks to buy big plants for landscaping jobs.

While the plants on tables are fairly organized, the larger ones on the ground are in no discernible order. Not that it bothers me—quite the contrary, it gives me an opportunity to explore, just in case something weird and unusual is hiding in plain sight.

Random snapshots from our garden, late July 2019

This post is a series of random photos taken in our garden at different times over the past few weeks. There's no real theme other than plants: some in flower, but all of them pretty even without.

This is what you see as you walk from the front door (behind us) to the driveway (over on the right):

I prefer to call it my “collection” of plants, but I won't blame you if you think it's hoarding about to veer off the rails. Just remember: My mantra is “if more is good, then more more is even more good.”

Some projects to liven up the dog days of summer

With the exception of a few days above 100°F, we've had an unexpectedly pleasant summer. That has allowed me to get more done than I otherwise would have. No big projects—they'll have to wait until fall—but a few little ones with surprisingly big impact.

Nature abhors a vacuum, the saying goes, and that definitely applies to empty planters. The Corten container in the photo below had been sitting there for weeks, taking the place of a bloomed-out Verbascum bombyciferum 'Arctic Summer':

While the gaping maw of the Styrofoam-lined interior wasn't the most attractive sight, I wasn't in a big hurry either because I simply didn't know what to put there. Well, actually I did know: I wanted to put an Agave 'Mr Ripple' in there (I have a nice blue clone from Ron Parker). However, since the container is only 2 ft. from the public sidewalk, there was no way I could plant a massive agave so close to where people pass by. 

Jackson Broussard: a landscape designer's personal garden

I imagine the work of a landscape designer is a constant give and take in order to find a balance between their own ideas and their clients' wishes. At best, the two parties strike a happy medium—and at worst, they end up making concessions that leave everybody dissatisfied.

That's the reason why I love seeing what garden designers do at home where they're not bound by compromise and can give their creativity free reign.

I had such an opportunity right after the 2018 Garden Bloggers Fling in Austin when Pam Penick, garden writer extraordinaire and one of the Fling organizers, took a handful of us diehards on a tour of even more gardens. The first one we visited belongs to landscape designer Jackson Broussard.

Hard to believe but these are Bradford pears

It was clear right off the bat that this is no ordinary garden. The walkway to the front door is lined with Bradford pears, shaped perfectly and giving a welcome sense of coolness in the Austin heat.

I couldn't believe these are the same trees I hate so much in Davis where, as city trees, they're neglected, misshapen, and infested with fire blight and mistletoe. I asked Jackson twice: Yes, they are Bradford pears. (Jackson created a ingenious Bradford pear arbor in another garden we visited as part of the Fling.)

Mid-summer plant evaluations for University of California Landscape Plant Irrigation Trials

A year ago I blogged about the irrigation trials at UC Davis. As I said at the time, the objective is to determine how ornamental plants fare when they receive different amounts of water and are irrigated increasingly less frequently. The ultimate goal is to find the sweet spot where a plant still looks good with as little irrigation as possible.

On the UC Landscape Plant Irrigation Trial website, the project is described like this:

UC Davis horticulturists are evaluating landscape plants with the potential to be good performers in low-water use gardens. [...] the plants are exciting new cultivars provided by growers and breeders who want to evaluate their new plant varieties for low-water use in hot California gardens. The results of these trials are providing growers and retailers the information they need to successfully distribute and market these plants to the public.